Phoenix Rising
by inkedinserendipity
Summary: Hiccup's life has not been easy. But perhaps it is those trials that defined the boy he was and shape the man he will be. Up to and after the battle of the Red Death, from the point of view of those who love him.
1. to fall

"No!" Hiccup screamed. "Stop, you'll – you're hurting him!"

The sound echoed futilely off the claustrophobia-inducing walls of the Kill Ring. Inside, Hiccup lunged desperately for his companion, his partner-in-flight, his _best friend,_ but Spitelout had Toothless's snout pinned and five other Vikings spread out across his wings and Toothless could do nothing but moan miserably.

Astrid latched onto Hiccup's arms. With the force of the axe she carried, she pinned them against his back. "Toothless," Hiccup whispered, still shoving against Astrid's wiry arms, wishing with all of him that there was some way to make them _see_, all their lives they'd been _blind_–

But Fate was not so kind as to grant them a reunion that day. Toothless was forced struggling out of the Ring and Hiccup was dragged into the Great Hall and thrown across the floor, sprawling out like a sack of moldy potatoes. The words "you're not my son" rang like a eulogy in his ears, even after his father pushed him onto the ground, outcasted him from the tribe, took away his home and his family and his best friend.

Long after the doors swung shut behind his fath – no, not his father – behind Berk's Chief, the stone floor remained cold, drawing on Hiccup's warmth. He sat, half-lying on the floor, and breathed. He really should have gotten up. He should have devised a clever plan to rescue Toothless and kill the Red Death and save the tribe, to finally win his father's pride. But he was done with trying. He curled in a ball instead, on the frozen floor of the once-merry Great Hall, and did not cry.

Several minutes later, Hiccup felt his muscles begin to lock up. With a hitched breath, he pulled himself off the ground and toward the door his father had so kindly left open, allowing him a view of the solemn and cowed village outside. Hiccup imagined Toothless, strapped to an iron cage somewhere, trapped and alone and scared. He banished the image forcefully from his mind as quickly as it had appeared. He ignored the salty burning in his eyes, blinked and railed against it, and forced himself slowly to his feet. Hiccup didn't quite make it outside the doors. Instead, he leaned against the frame and struggled to keep himself standing on two feet.

For the first time in his fifteen years, his head was bowed, his feet were heavy, and Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third had no plan, no idea of what to do to fix the situation.

But he would not cry, because that was not the Viking way, and even if he wasn't a Viking any more it was all he had left.

Of course, another rule of being a Viking was to always kill dragons, but he'd always been an – an unconventional Viking.

He remained leaning against the doorpost for a long time. Something had been keeping him steady, stable, for the past couple of months. Now that thing was gone, trapped inside the arena and bound to Death. And if he could have, he'd go after his other half in an instant – but as an Outcast, there was no way he could ever safely access the Arena in time, much less rescue a tied and condemned Night Fury.

Gobber passed by the Hall, balancing a series of wooden planks easily with his mechanical hand. He almost didn't see the boy slumped and lifeless against the doors of the Great Hall. But the shape of a still Hiccup arrested his attention, and he debated with himself for a mere quarter-second before dropping the wood in the dust.

"Hiccup," the man intoned gruffly, limping toward his former apprentice. "Hiccup? Hiccup!" Gobber reached out and latched onto the boy's shoulder with his flesh hand.

Hiccup started, falling against the door, then stopped himself. "Oh," he said, and his tone was flatter and duller than Gobber had ever heard him. "Hi, Gobber."

Something wrenched uncomfortably at Gobber's insides, as if someone had taken his father's axe and stabbed him with it. "You all right there, Hiccup?" Gobber asked, knowing that Hiccup would smile and lie to his face and really not be all right at all.

"Yeah," Hiccup did indeed grin his best for Gobber, trying to reassure the man and convince him that Hiccup didn't blame him, but the effect was quite ruined by the shining in Hiccup's eyes that the boy continued to fight. "You…you probably shouldn't be seen with me," he said, voice wavering.

"Nonsense," Gobber said sharply. "I'll have none of that."

Hiccup's face crumpled like paper for a brief second, but the expression was there and gone so fast that Gobber wasn't sure he saw it. "Thanks, but I…I'm an Outcast, now. Don't want to be associating with those types, right?" Hiccup tried for a laugh and ended up croaking a wet cough instead.

(His father had used the horrible Outcasts as a method to scare a young Hiccup away from exploring, when Hiccup was small and hardly able to see over his father's waist, peering around his father's sheath to make sure nothing large and hairy and treacherous approached.)

Gobber paused, thrown off by the un-Hiccup-like display of sadness. The boy was nothing if not resilient, and seeing Hiccup finally beaten down simply shredded his guts more.

"Don't give up, lad," Gobber advised, trying to meet Hiccup's averted eyes. "Oi, look at me." He forced Hiccup's chin upward with his living hand, dragging the boy's attention toward his face and his words. "Hope ain't lost yet, Hiccup. You know your father, stubborn as a dead mule and twice as dumb. Ye've got to prove it to 'im, about that dragon."

Hiccup huffed and pushed himself off the door with peculiar vehemence, nearly overbalancing in the process. Privately, Gobber smiled at the fire rekindling in his apprentice's eyes. "I've tried everything. Seriously! I tried _everything_, Gobber! I made friends with a Night Fury, I tamed that Nightmare in the Ring, he even saw when Toothless came to protect me! How can – what else can I do?"

"Ah, but I'm not the one that comes up with ideas around here." Gobber patted Hiccup on the back, sending him forward a few paces and nearly into the blacksmith's stomach. "That's your job."

"Well, I'm fresh out."

"Oh, I don' believe that."

Hiccup jerked his shoulders up, arms waving furiously in Gobber's direction. "Well, do you have any ideas?" he challenged.

"No, but I've never been good with the whole thinking mess. That's why we have you."

"Who's _we_, Gobber? I'm an Outcast, remember?!"

Gobber couldn't answer that fast enough. The fire went out of Hiccup's eyes as fast as it'd lit, and his shoulders sagged. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Oi, don't be doin' that." Gobber grabbed Hiccup by both shoulders. "Outcast or no – that depends on what ye do about it. Don't go givin' up now, boy, because if you do that I'll know it's not a Hiccup we outcasted."

Hiccup looked up, looked at Gobber's hands gently grasping his shoulders, looked in his mentor's face and digested his words with a chain of logic as steady as a hammer over an anvil.

And with those peculiar words, Gobber released Hiccup, grabbed the bound planks and hefted them over his shoulder, and retreated toward the docks with a parting nod that both knew concealed a hundred more words.

"Why are we doing this again?" Snotlout called from his unsteady perch on the Monstrous Nightmare. "Hiccup is an Outcast, you know. We could be exiled for this."

Astrid stiffened in front of Hiccup and yelled right back over the speeding winds. "Because this could save our tribe, Snotlout! Think about it. I know that's hard, but try for a second. If we could get rid of the thing controlling the dragons, then the dragons would stop raiding Berk, and people would stop dying."

Snotlout processed this for more moments than was strictly necessary for anyone with more than three brain cells to rub together. Than he shouted back, swerving above the Nadder, "But why are we following _Hiccup?_"

"Unlike you, Hiccup knows what he's doing."

"Hey, I know what I'm doing!" Snotlout exclaimed indignantly. "Get in there and bash the thing controlling the dragons!"

Hiccup could've felt Astrid rolling her eyes through closed eyes. "Ignore him," she sighed, eyes fixed on the Nadder's spine she held in a death grip.

"It's fine," Hiccup joked drily. "I've been doing that my entire life."

He felt Astrid slump and hastened to rephrase that. "I mean, um, just Snotlout. Because Snotlout is a marsh-eating troll. Not you."

Her spine instantly stiffened as she realized her guilty reaction. "I'm not feeling sorry for you or anything. Don't get the wrong idea," she hissed.

Hiccup grinned faintly.

She half-twisted around to face him, still hesitant to take her eyes off the roiling ocean below. "What's the plan, now that we have dragons?"

Hiccup shrugged. "Find Toothless and kill the Queen."

Astrid arched an eyebrow at him. "Any more details?"

Hiccup cursed his luck that he should be riding with the cleverest Viking on Berk besides himself. He shook his head, grimacing. By his standards, it was a stupidly simple plan, but a mantra of _toothlesstoothlesstoothless_ kept running through his head and effectively blocking out all other coherent thoughts.

Astrid squinted at him, expression unreadable "Sounds like a Viking plan to me."

Hiccup shrugged uncomfortably at that. "I know, I just-"

Astrid noticed and smacked him (companionably? Hiccup couldn't tell with her) on the shoulder. He flinched. "It's a good plan. Maybe your father can make you in charge of tactics when we get back," she tried.

Hiccup tried to tell her through a dry throat that hey, he was an Outcast, remember? But before he could say anything, Astrid arched both eyebrows at his inevitable denial and whipped him with her braid as she turned to face front, hunching awkwardly over her Nadder's neck. "None of that."

"O-um, okay."

Seconds twisted into minutes. A raised cacophony drew their attention. Ruffnut and Tuffnut had begun experimenting with their new dragon. The twins were fascinated by the idea that if they got the Zippleback to spin in a circle around them and spark to create a ring of flame, they could light themselves on fire. Ruffnut tugged on her head – which she'd named Barf in jest (at least Hiccup thought it was a joke, he couldn't actually tell) – in an effort to spin the dragon and gas a circle around them. But as if the dragon was already aware of its rider's stupidity, it growled at her and refused to take its eyes off the horizon.

"I think our dragon's broken," Ruff whispered to Tuffnut, glancing down at Hiccup to make sure he couldn't hear, though her voice stretched behind them for miles. Hiccup made a noncommittal gesture in her direction to convince her that he had no idea what was going on. She grinned and flashed him a nervous thumbs-up, even as her brother added "Don't tell Hiccup."

"I wasn't going to, you idiot," she hissed back, glaring sparks at her brother. "What if he tried to flame us with that Night Fury?"

"Ruff, you idiot, that Night Fury isn't even here!"

"Wait, then how is he flying?"

Both twins slowly turned toward Hiccup. Barf snorted impatiently at his rider's unpredictable antics. "He's riding a Nadder," Tuff muttered.

"How is he doing that? Two dragons?"

The twins shared a glance, then yelled "Cool!" and nearly fell off their dragon helmet-bashing.

"Odin help us," Astrid sighed.

"How did you deal with that for fifteen years?" Hiccup asked incredulously.

"That and Snotlout," Astrid added irritably, jerking her head toward where Snotlout was emitting a verbal stream of praise toward both his dragon and himself. He'd named his dragon Fanghook, calling it a work-in-progress. He was convinced his dragon's name needed to be as terrifying as possible. "Do you think he even knows where we're going?"

"Maybe."

Astrid snorted. "All he knows is that we're going to kill things."

"Well, he is good at killing things," Hiccup granted, glancing toward where Snotlout was sitting heavily on the Nightmare's neck.

"Unfortunately," she muttered mutinously.

"We'll need him." He looked from his thick-skulled cousin toward the roiling ocean below. If he concentrated, he could tune the ocean's waves to the acrobatics his stomach was performing.

"Worried?"

Hiccup's first instinct was to deny it, but there was no point. "Yeah," he breathed quietly.

"Smart of you. To be worried."

"Thanks?"

She nodded. "You'll get Toothless out. I'll flame you myself if you don't."

"Astrid, I really don't know what message you're trying to convey here."

"I'm being nice."

"You're threatening to kill me."

"Same thing," she dismissed the protest with a wave of her hand.

"Not quite."

Miraculously, she let it slide. Hiccup suspected it was more due to her constricting grip on the Nadder's scales than any compassion. And he would have continued thinking that, but-

"Survive and the Chief will have to let you back in the village."

Hiccup slumped forward toward the expanding and contracting scales of the blue Nadder. "I don't know, Astrid," Hiccup whispered back. "I've been trying all my life to get my dad to accept, y'know, me, and look where _that's_ gotten me so far."

Astrid twisted around again. "That's because you were trying to get him to accept someone other than you," she said, and her words cracked like a whip in the freezing air. She gestured toward the teens amassed on their magnificent dragons. "This is you."

"This is me coming up with a half-cooked plan to save the most deadly dragon in the world."

"Exactly!" she exclaimed proudly. "That's you. You come up with stupid and brilliant plans to do stupid and brilliant and impossible things."

Toothless smelled his human coming before he saw him. The scent was muted, mingled with the she-human and a Spinethrower he'd smelled briefly in the Ring. He tried desperately to message the dragon that carried his human, but the Queen's signal blocked out all others, including even the Night Fury's own.

Toothless watched as his human commanded the other teenagers to battle stations. Toothless saw a bit of an Alpha in the human, just a spark of something new; he saw as the human King watched his son in amazement, tracing the Spinethrower's curving path in the air with wide stunned eyes. He was glad to sniff fresh regret and guilt pouring off the human leader as he stared after his son's commanding voice and shining ingenuity.

_Serves him right,_ Toothless sniffed to himself, ignoring his current predicament for pride in his rider.

Unfortunately, not even a Night Fury can fend off fumes and flames forever, and as much as he wanted to witness his human's triumph and the death of the treacherous Queen, his dual eyelids slid shut without his consent – until a pair of human boots thudded to the deck.

"Help the others!" Hiccup commanded the Spinethrower and her new rider, gesturing toward the Death, then without delay set his full strength to Toothless's bonds.

Gathering the remaining threads of his strength, Toothless yanked on the wooden restraints, but even together dragon and Rider couldn't dent the snaked ropes. Toothless had about given up – Hiccup had not, brave human – when the Queen's wrath plummeted toward the boat and snapped it in two.

Toothless panicked. Sky dragons and water were never meant to mix. Ocean means drowning, ocean means death and destruction and flame extinguished. They hit the water with a cold and terrible splash. He sunk like a stone toward the deep lake's bottom. Hiccup paid no mind to the abrupt environmental change and dove fearlessly toward Toothless, heedless of the water that raked past his pale skin. The dragon tugged furiously on his restraints, blind to everything except the delicate human who heaved in tandem at the ropes.

When Hiccup ran out of air, Toothless's panic switched from himself to the human. He strained toward his rider who was alarmingly limp and unmoving, his Hiccup who was always dancing and talking and _trying_, who floated silent in the deadly water.

_Hiccup! _he screamed through an abrupt mouthful of salt. He couldn't care that he was swallowing the water brought death faster. He jerked even harder on the Hel-cursed ropes, willing them to bend and snap _he would not see Hiccup drown-_

Then something plunged toward Hiccup, a human form that grabbed his Rider in both hands and heaved toward the surface. But Toothless was not slighted. Instead, he was relieved; without Hiccup, the others could not defeat the Death. Without Hiccup, there would be no peace, no hope for his home. He would not wish a Hiccup-less world on anyone.

Toothless's vision tunneled black. He now gazed at stars he had touched, long ago. He watched them twirl without regret.

Toothless's eyes slid shut without him noticing that same thing speed toward him, slicing powerfully through the water. At the abrupt shift of currents, Toothless forced his eyes open. And the face of Hiccup's father registered in Toothless's vision.

The man and dragon stared, head cocked and eyes wary. For a reason unbeknownst to the dragon, the human King came to a decision and heaved once, twice, on Toothless's cage, snapping it in two.

For a moment, Toothless faltered, unsure. (He had only been unsure about Death once before, when he was freed from a deadly trap and ready to kill the one who had wounded him.) But Hiccup had loved that man. Had loved him despite the apparent disdain the man showed his son. And Hiccup's love constituted reason enough to save a human, even a Viking King and a murderer. So on the way up, Toothless dragged the man out of the deadly water.

_Come on_, he barked at his Rider, flapping past the King and his daring son. _It's go time._

END

To be continued.


	2. to burn

The downed dragon loomed over everything, over the island and the massed Vikings and the newly-freed dragons. Her maw still gaped in a grim visage and fires still crackled around her folded wings, but no one paid her much heed.

Instead they formed a ring around their heir's still form. Many would deny the joy they heard upon hearing of the boy's life (emotions are simply not the Viking way), but none would deny the splintering guilt.

Both boy and dragon were out and cold. Stoick shouted for a healer, words cracked and nearly incomprehensible. The crowd shifted and stumbled but accordingly spat out Larkmeat. The Berkian medic shoved his way to Hiccup's side, spared nary a glance to the Night Fury next to him, took one look at the mangled leg and shook his head sadly. The leg was nearly shorn off as it was; a small bit of bone stuck out from torn flesh, which was swollen and red and utterly unusable.

"Can you save it?" Stoick asked Larkmeat desperately.

Larkmeat sobered at the raw emotion in his Chief's voice. Forty years a Hooligan and he'd seen his Chief this distraught once, the night dear Valka was taken. "There's nary I can do, sir," Larkmeat told him, and yelled for his daughter to grab the med kit and help.

Stoick sat down hard by his son. Around him, Larkmeat grabbed a wide variety of medical items and hovered with a practiced air over Hiccup. Gobber slowly sat next to Stoick, eyes fixed on Hiccup's leg as Stoick stared at his son's pallid face. Neither of them said a word for a space of heartbeats. Then,

"Look," Gobber told his friend softly, pointing at Hiccup's leg and nudging Stoick gentlyin the side.

"I've already seen it," Stoick replied sharply, unwilling to tear his eyes from his son's face.

Gobber jabbed him in the arm harder. "Stoick."

Unwillingly, Stoick wrenched his gaze toward his son's useless leg. "What?" he snapped.

"Those are teeth marks," Gobber said wondrously.

Stoick squinted at them. Then facts fell in place like jigsaw pieces. "That…you-" he started, half-rising and glaring at the Fury. His earlier gratitude whisked away. The beast had taken his son's leg!

"Sit," Gobber commanded, and even through his fury the Chief obeyed. "That dragon saved Hiccup's life."

"It took his leg!"

"Better his leg 'n his life, Stoick."

Stoick frowned, trying to parse the words from between furrowed eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

Gobber directed his gaze toward the Fury's torn riding gear. "Saddle's all broken, see, and his tail doesn' work any more. Why would he bite Hiccup's leg off? Doesn' make sense. He and the dragon rode together, Stoick."

"Then what _happened,_ Gobber?" Stoick exploded.

The blacksmith was silent for a precious few moments, watching Larkmeat apply a salve. "Bets are Hiccup fell off the saddle and the beastie here caught 'im."

"You're saying…you're saying that…" Stoick trailed off and shook his head.

"Aye," Gobber said, and his voice turned hard. "The dragon saved your son. You know it as well's I do."

Stoick didn't know to say aye or no, so he didn't say anything at all.

Stoick stayed by his son's side for as long as he could manage. At some point during his silent vigil, the Hofferson girl and Snotlout joined him, both of whom were uncharacteristically quiet under the gravity of the situation. The sight of Hiccup's leg, torn and bound by Larkmeat's hand, wrenched a faint horrified gasp from Astrid and a surprised hiss from his nephew. But they were otherwise respectful and silent, though Astrid asked Gobber with the slightest tremor in her voice if Hiccup would survive. Snotlout, Stoick was distantly surprised to see, looked as eager to hear Gobber's answer as Astrid did; but he filed that revelation away for future contemplation.

And then the dragon abruptly woke with a ragged breath. The Night Fury twitched an earfin at first, then warbled a quietly tired call, eyes flitting around behind closed eyelids. Stoick could _see _the exact moment the dragon realized Hiccup wasn't responding. The dragon wrenched his eyes open and tried to raise his head to look for Hiccup, half-yelping and half-screaming in pain (or alarm? Stoick couldn't tell) when he realized Hiccup was nowhere near him. The Fury barked weakly at the air, trying to lift a wing to look for the boy, nudging the underside of his veined wing. Stoick looked at the panicking beast for a moment, before stumbling wearily over to the dragon.  
>"Over there," Stoick muttered from a fair distance away, pointing toward Hiccup's fallen form. The dragon heard him and located Hiccup with a sigh that sounded uncannily relieved.<p>

Stoick expected that to be the end – that with Hiccup located and breathing (however marginally) that the dragon would let himself rest. But no. The Fury dragged himself to four paws, rattling breaths through what sounded like broken ribs, and staggered unevenly toward Hiccup and the medic.

Larkmeat turned, indignant, toward the dragon, and tried shoving at the dragon's snout to shoo the beast away, fearlessly irate over the perceived threat posed to his patient. But the dragon stubbornly resisted Larkmeat's rejections, ducking heavily under the medic's muscled arms, and trilled repeatedly at Hiccup. But Hiccup did not respond.

"Let him be," Stoick commanded suddenly, surprising himself as much as the others. Four pairs of shocked eyes found his own. Stoick struggled to justify the emotional order. "The dragon won't rest. He can stay on the side. It won't interfere."

Larkmeat was astounded. "Chief, it's a _dragon_."

"I know what it is," Stoick responded drily, rubbing his forehead. "You don't need to remind me. But can you operate efficiently with a Night Fury breathing down your back, Larkmeat?"

"I can't work _over_ one either!" the man resisted.

"I said, it won't intervene."

Larkmeat looked incredulously at the Night Fury mere feet from his patient. As if understanding the conversation, the dragon nodded in what seemed like affirmation, warbling positively in the man's direction. Then, pinning the medic in his place with one cautious eye, he dropped carefully and slowly to the ground by Hiccup's side a few feet from his leg.

After a prominent pause Larkmeat nodded his reluctant agreement. Stoick wondered when he'd started vouching for dragons. But the dragon, finally content with Larkmeat's reluctant acquiescence, curled in an awkward semi-circle with a tailfin shielding Hiccup's face.

A few minutes later, Larkmeat hailed his Chief's attention. "Sir?" he called, snapping Stoick out of his reverie.

"Yes?"

"We are going to need to take the leg off," he said in a gruff voice as kind as Stoick had ever heard it.

Stoick squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't pretend he hadn't expected the announcement but he'd hoped against Odin that amputation wouldn't be necessary.

"He is stable at the moment," Larkmeat continued. "In an hour we'll come back and…well, get it done, Chief. But for the meanwhile I recommend you walk around. Inactivity will only make your mental state worse. Sir."

Stoick nodded once and stood, then wandered aimlessly into the fog.

He stumbled to the nearest rock and sat down heavily. Somehow, Hiccup had managed to tame a Night Fury, the most accursedly powerful beast in the entire known world. No; somehow, he'd managed to make friends with it. And Stoick hadn't even noticed.

Remorse stabbed him in the stomach, sharper than the rock that'd shorn off a bit of his eyebrow. He put his head in his hands and mourned the loss of fifteen years with his only son.

Stoick was easy to find, not in the least because he'd left a visible trail through the dissipating fog. When Gobber had told the boy to come up with wit-sharpened ideas, he hadn't meant…this. He hadn't meant for Hiccup to ride in on a horde of tamed dragons and kill the Queen that had been terrorizing Vikings for centuries! Well, it was amazing to be free of that terror, of course, but…

The boy would lose his leg. And unlike relationships, that couldn't ever be healed.

He would have to help the boy. Hiccup would be lost in this change without aid. But the boy was resilient. If Hiccup could survive the initial shock, Gobber mused, chances were he'd spring back up as chipper and _Hiccup_ as ever.

"'E's a bit of work, isn't he."

It was several long seconds before Stoick lifted his head to respond, eyes cracked and glimmering suspiciously. "I failed him," the great Chief said quietly.

"Oh, don't think like that. Look-"

"I didn't pay attention!" Stoick hissed furiously. "For fifteen years, Gobber! How is that not-"

"-Stoick, none of us could'a understand the boy-"

"-I was his father, I should have tried harder-"

"-oh for the love o' – Stoick!" Gobber shouted, smacking his friend soundly on the arm with his splintered hook. "Listen to me, ye stubborn fool!

"You're Chief, Stoick. You have responsibilities none of us will ever know. And on top o' that, ye don't have a wife any more! Hiccup wasn' an easy child to begin with, Stoick, and ye can't blame yourself for bein' busy.

"Now, granted, ye probably could've tried a wee bit harder. Thing is, all o' us coulda' tried a wee bit harder, so the fault ain't all yours."

Stoick squinted, unseeing, toward where he knew Hiccup's body lay, refusing to blink against accumulating dust. "You're right. I should have tried harder," he whispered.

Gobber hissed out a sigh and hit him again. "You don't listen, do ye'," he muttered, mostly to himself. "Stoick," he commanded, and grabbed his friend and Chief by the shoulders and shook him, hard. Only then did Stoick remember to blink and clear his eyes from irritants. "Get this through your thick skull, o Chief – it was _not _all your faul'," Gobber told him, emphatically pronouncing each word. "He didn't make it easy, you didn' make it easy, none of us made it easy, him bein' different. We all though' it was, well," he shrugged awkwardly, "bad different." He released Stoick's shoulders, making sure the words were sinking in. By Thor, he hoped they were. "Now we know it's jus' Hiccup-different, and maybe we know it's not a bad thing all th' time. You can make amends, Stoick, because you understan' him now."

"I thought I did," Stoick told him, and Gobber was infinitely relieved to hear that the weight pressing his friend's voice to the ground is gone. "I thought I understood 'im. You know. Before the…the Ring."

"Oh, aye," Gobber grinned, a small, reminiscent thing. "We all did. We were wrong, weren't we?"

"Guess I just couldn't understand anything that didn't have to do with…"

"Anything whose first priorities weren't bashing dragon skulls."

Stoick took his helmet off and shook off his hunched position, instead resting his elbows on his knees and looking…somewhere in the distance. "He reminds me of Val, Gobber."

Gobber barked a laugh. "Oh, aye, runnin' around like mad tryin' to protect everyone and everythin'."

Finally, _finally,_ Stoick cracked a small smile. His wife had cared tremendously about everything – all Vikings, all dragons, and especially her small son Hiccup. It had led to a few bumbling disasters, true, especially when Valka showed her caring through a conciliatory meal or two, but she always _tried…_

Until she'd gotten herself carried off by dragons, blood and brethren of the beast wrapped protectively around his son.

Stoick shook his head to clear that thought from his head. Down _that_ path lay too many barrels of mead, which would only be compounded by the fact that he had to make peace with the dragons. He hissed at the thought.

"Gobber, they're – they're beasts," he said desperately, his old ingrained beliefs at war with the sight before him. And indeed, once the Queen had been felled (-_but the price was too high_ his mind whispered before he could shut it up-) the dragons had formed a quiet, peaceful circle around the wounded champions. They were just sitting; not attacking, not growling, just…sitting. And if Stoick used his admittedly frail imagination, he would almost believe they were keeping vigil. "They're just animals, how-"

Gobber heaved a sigh and stretched his metal leg out in front of him, absently massaging the cleaved flesh. "Och, I don't wan' to think it either," he admitted. "But we can't ignore 'em, Stoick. Whatever your boy changed today he changed to stay."

"And that's what scares me," Stoick confessed, rubbing his throbbing eyes. "What do we _do_? We can't very well keep a Night Fury on Berk, we can't – we can't _ride dragons._ What would our forefathers say?"

"Ship us off for fear we'd lost our minds," Gobber muttered under a pained exhale. "But times are a-changing. And trust me. I don' like the beasties any more'n you do, Stoick, but you can't ignore this'un and hope it turns tail and runs."

"What, so – so you're telling me to accept them? The beasts that killed my village – the beasts that took my wife?" Stoick tried to keep his voice reasonable, but couldn't help the furious edge that crackled along his sentence.

Gobber bowed his head at the mention of Valka, but looked his Chief in the eye again all the same. "From what it sounds," he told his friend solemnly, "it mightn't have been the dragons."

Confusion turned to comprehension then anger as fast as lightning "The Queen," Stoick muttered darkly, fist clenching on his axe and voice lowered. "Damn her to Hel. I wish I could have killed her myself."

"Aye, and don't we all," Gobber said, and Stoick is forcibly reminded that while he lost a wife, Gobber lost half his limbs. "But we can't move forwar' 'til we've stopped lookin' back."

Taking the dragons to Berk would be treason. It would be the worst crime committed in the history of all Vikingdom. It would be the betrayal of every moral principle and honorable code the Vikings held dear. It would literally dance on the deceased's graves by feasting with their killers.

And Stoick the Vast was seriously considering it.

With a deep sigh, he wrenched emotion out of the situation and thought objectively. The Queen was the master of the dragons, so it seemed. She commanded them with some form of…communication, or something (_perhaps Hiccup would know but he was quiet and still and gone)_ and if that were true, then the dragons who'd burned and raided and killed were not doing so of their own volition. Which would not make them the true enemies, but the monster lying dead on her home's shores.

She was the wraith that killed and burned and ate and stole faces, masks to do her own bidding while she lazed in a mountain, keeping herself warm and fat.

Stoick spat on the ground, infuriated at the thought of her cowardice. To Hel with the Queen. Were he a betting man Stoick would wager had been Loki's daughter.

"I can't do this, Gobber," he asked, and was not sure if he was looking for Gobber to dissuade him or agree.

"You're Chief. You c'n do whatever you like."

"That's not what I mean."

"Yes it is. You are the only person in this tribe with th' power to change things. So now 's up to you, Stoick. What're you going to do?"

Stoick sighed. "People aren't going to accept this."

Gobber grinned and wiped an errant trickle of blood off his temple, keeping it from staining his mustache. "Course not. We're Vikings. Bullheadedness is in our blood. But once we see what we've done wrong-" he pointed grandly toward Stoick's own hunched form "-we see reason eventually."

A great cheer greeted the three ships, rising and swelling grandly from the huge crowd that had gathered near the docks. "We've done it!" Spitelout called proudly, pumping his fist in a rare display of immaturity, and the amassed Vikings hollered all the louder.

At least, until they caught sight of the dragons following the boats in a flock large enough to block out the sky.

"Is that-" Phlegma the Fierce shouted disbelievingly.

"I thought you'd said you'd done it!" Pinesnort yelled angrily.

"Och, it ain't what it looks like. They're not here to attack," Gobber hollered right back.

"They're dragons!" someone panicked in the back.

"Oi!" Stoick bellowed, and everyone abruptly shut up. "Your orders are to ignore the dragons for now. They will go to the forest and we will deal with them later. For now, we have wounded. Move the survivors to the Great Hall."

Without further ado, Stoick hefted Hiccup easily in his arms, cradling his limp son easily with two gigantic hands, and slipped with surprising stealth under the confusion. He jogged through the town center toward his home. It was only when he'd reached the door to his house that the hair on the back of his neck prickled eerily.

A Night Fury slunk around the edge of his house and leapt cautiously on the wooden snow-laden deck, sniffing at Hiccup but keeping one eye on Stoick all the same.

Stoick sighed a half-reluctant, half-resigned acquiescence and nudged the door open with one foot. The dragon followed a mere half-step behind him and slipped inside before Stoick could have so much as thought to shut it on his snout. Seeing the bed Stoick was heading for, the Fury fell in cautious step with the large Viking, then curled up on the bed's frame and ducked his head in his shoulder to sleep.

Well, Stoick certainly wasn't going to try and evict a fire-breathing demon (demon?) from his wooden house. But neither was he going to leave his boy vulnerable. So he pulled a chair to the bedside and made himself comfortable.

The dragon would not leave Hiccup's side. Only Astrid and Snotlout were brave enough to actually approach Death's dreaded offspring. He noticed Astrid was infinitely more comfortable around the dragon than Snotlout. Now that Hiccup was stable and resting he'd had more time to muse about details like that.

"You seem comfortable around him," he commented during one such visit.

Astrid looked at her Chief in surprise. "Sorry?"

"Around the dragon," he nodded toward the black beast, who was sleeping twined around HIccup's still form.

She shrugged uncomfortably. "I got used to having him around, I guess."

Stoick could tell, of course, that her response was not entirely truthful, but he let it drop.

The truth was, Stoick had also grow used to having the dragon around. Week by week, they struck up an odd accord. The dragon – Toothless, that was the name Hiccup had given the dragon, Stoick recalled on the fifth day – would lie peacefully by Hiccup's shallowly breathing frame while Stoick needed be a Chief for his people, and Stoick would keep vigil with hunched shoulders and far-flung thoughts when Toothless bounded around the forest to force weakness from his injured body. And even though they could not speak with Norse, Stoick found himself understanding the dragon all the same.

As he looked back on the days before his ill-fated charge of Helheim's Gate, he realized in full what had happened. The dragon – Toothless – had no tailfin. Had he been able to get away and off the island, he would have done so, and he would have done so before Hiccup had found him. But Hiccup _had_ found him, so the Fury had probably been trapped somewhere.

But Toothless had also shown up to fend off the captive Nightmare, to stop her fire inches from his son.

Stoick wondered with a bit of awe if the thought of Hiccup in danger had driven Toothless out whatever prison he'd been caught in – even more so than the thought of his own impending doom.

And so things fell into a rhythm. Early morning was reserved for Hiccup. Late morning and afternoon were spent Chiefing and sorting out dragon-related catastrophes and disputes and typical Viking issues, made a tad more complicated now that dragons were moving into Berk. The mornings were of course peppered with whenever-possible visits to the Haddock house and its wounded warrior.

Stoick found himself somehow growing accustomed to the abyss that should have held warm flesh on his son's leg. But Gobber had written off all but the most essential orders at the forge to create a new leg for Hiccup, so the times Stoick would find himself staring at Hiccup's uneven legs were growing scarcer.

And, Valkyries help him, he'd caught himself talking to the faithful beast, as if it could understand him. Like now.

"Och," he muttered in an undertone. "Boy's as stubborn as his mother. She'd near sleep til daybreak." He also told himself that no, he wasn't talking about his wife to a dragon. The dragon was simply within convenient earshot, seated by the fire.

It didn't help his illusions one bit that Toothless snorted in hearty agreement, as if he were carrying on a conversation with the bulky Viking leader. The dragon lowered his eyes in exasperated agreement and huffed an impatient breath at his human.

"He'll wake up soon," Stoick found himself reassuring the dragon.

The dragon arched an eyebrow at him in an eerily humanlike expression. "He will," Stoick reiterated. Then, quieter, "He will."

Toothless sighed and crept quietly nearer Hiccup's sleeping form. The dragon trilled once, twice, gently, as if the melodious sound of a dragon's waiting could rouse a young Viking from his coma. Softly, he nudged Hiccup's shoulder with an inquisitive snout – but as it had been for the past few weeks, Hiccup gave no reply. Stoick held back an anxious sigh. The dragon, too, inhaled as if downcast by the lack of change, and settled his head lightly on Hiccup's stomach, wrapping a tail around the missing leg.

Stoick was struck, abruptly, at how naturally the dragon curled himself protectively around his son – how easily Toothless slipped into Hiccup's vulnerabilities and weak points and made them whole again. How he'd followed Hiccup to Hel and back without question.

"How is it," he asked the dragon quietly, dropping his head into his hands, "you've come to understand my son better'n I have?"

That was it, Stoick thought bitterly. He'd learned his lesson. He cursed the Gods for a brief moment – wasn't that the point? You never realized what you had until you'd lost it? Well, he'd realized! He swore – he swore, to himself and Val and to the thrice-cursed dragon, that he would never take his son for granted again.

Never again. He'd rather die.

The dragon picked up his head at the sound of his defeated voice, narrowed his lizard-like eyes, and to Stoick's surprise, stalked around the bed toward him.

"Whoa, dragon, I didn't mean to-" he protested in vain. Still the Night Fury crept closer. Stoick extended a hand to soothe whatever offense he'd inadvertently caused –

But Toothless snorted at the hand and lowered his head, pushing the outstretched hand away from Toothless and toward his motionless son.

Stoick looked uncomprehendingly from his son to the dragon and back again. "I've checked his temperature twice already," he reminded the beast, though he shifted the wet cloth on his son's forehead all the same.

Toothless snorted a familiar, exasperated breath, and guided Stoick's hand more forcefully toward the sleeping boy. The dragon then lowered his forehead onto Hiccup's hand, which dangled limply off the bed, and looked at Stoick expectantly.

Stoick sat awkwardly at his son's bedside, hand outstretched and indecisive. The Night Fury rolled his eyes, stomped (quietly) back to the other side of the bed and hopped up on creaky springs with a lithe, catlike movement. He curled once more around his unconscious rider. And Stoick thought that was the end of that. But Toothless picked up his maimed tail and tapped Stoick's hand then Hiccup's forehead in quick succession before tucking his tail back around Hiccup's feet.

Comprehension finally dawned. The dragon disappeared from Stoick's field of vision. He inched his own hand forward, drawing his chair closer to his son. Hiccup was as still and silent as he'd been for days. He was pale and drawn and burn scars matted his face and shoulders and remaining leg. The bandages wrapped around his head and arm were tainted pink with dried blood and slopped with water, which Astrid had accidentally spilled during one of Hiccup's nightmares. But he was alive.

Alive.

Stoick laid a gentle palm on his son's forehead. And unlike the times he'd done so for business, to ensure that his fever hadn't risen too high, to make sure his precious Hiccup would live another day, it was a connection of sorts. His son's hair was surprisingly soft, given it hadn't been washed since the ash-ridden Dragon Island. Stoick absently carded his other hand through Hiccup's hair, still resting his other palm on his forehead, and scooted his chair as close to Hiccup's bedside as it could go.

"I don't know if I ever told you," Stoick began, swallowing hard. Vikings did not show emotion, especially not their Chiefs. "Told you, that, um. Your mother – Val, Valka, she was…was a lot like you."

Stoick grinned a watery grin at his son, determinedly forcing the tears to stay inside his ducts where they belonged. "Always running around and, and trying to fix things. Trying to save people. Did you know – she tried to show me that dragons were kind!

"You would have loved to talk to her, Hiccup. You would've gotten along so well. She had so many ideas. Not all of them were good," Stoick chuckled softly, reminiscing. Still his hand smoothed Hiccup's hair down. "She loved to cook. A lot less than we liked to eat her cooking, mind you." He remembered competing with Gobber at who could pull the most accurate face of Valka's cooking behind her back – and half their expressions hadn't been feigned.

"She was beautiful," he whispered. "You have her nose. And her eyes."

Stoick bowed his head over his son's broken body.

"Let me see them again? Let me see her eyes – let me see your eyes, Hiccup. Please," he begged. "Just-" his face crumpled without his permission. "Give me another chance?" he whispered. "Come home?"

TO BE CONTINUED.


End file.
